regime forces had consolidated their positions and pushed into some rebel-held areas. Diplomacy had failed to find a solution to a conflict that was racking up daily death tolls in the double, and sometimes triple, digits. The horrific images of death and carnage had drawn in foreign fighters from around the world,on both sides of a conflict that was becoming increasingly sectarian. There were Lebanese and Iraqi Shiites and Iranians with the regime, and a hodgepodge of nationalities I’d seen on my many trips into Syria, including Chechens, Tunisians, Libyans and Lebanese fighting with the predominantly Sunni rebels. I learned of an American ex-military convert to Islam, Abu Osama, who was training jihadis in basic warfare. (I wasn’t surprised when he declined to be interviewed.) One senior Nusra emir I know is recruiting and training a cell of Palestinians and Arab-Israelis.

Many of the muhajiroon entered rebel-held northern Syria from Turkey. There were numerous smuggling routes along the 511-mile frontier, most of which were in use well before the Syrian uprising. As broad areas of Syrian territory abutting Turkey fell from government control, it became even easier to cross. By the summer of 2012, Bab al-Hawa, an official Syrian crossing with Turkey, had been won by the rebels, enabling men, money, munitions and humanitarian aid from private donors to be ferried by vehicle into northern Syria.

The muhajiroon had been coming of their own accord since at least the earliest months of 2012, but more would begin to flow. The foreign fighters were easy to spot on the domestic flights from Istanbul to Hatay, a Turkish province near Syria: men with long beards and short pants worn above the ankle in the manner of the Prophet Mohammad. They mainly joined non-FSA jihadi groups, although some became part of the FSA. By mid-September 2012, Nusra had established a more organized system of funneling foreign fighters into Syria, naming an “emir of the borders” whose job was to help facilitate their entry.Al Qaeda’s central command in Afghanistan pitched in with the details of coordinators in Tunisia and the Arabian Peninsula who would send men to Turkey. “That was the mistake,” said a Nusra member with knowledge of the operations, because so many muhajiroon later turned against his group. They were generally more dogmatic than their local counterparts. “I’m surprised by some of these people,” the Nusra member told me. “They had little understanding and were stubborn. Their heads were as thick as walls.”

Four halfway homes were rented in Hatay: two in the main city Antakya, one in Reyhanli (not far from the Bab al-Hawa border crossing) and one in Kirikhan in the northeast. The men would be picked up outside Hatay airport, not inside it with its security cameras. “On the slowest day, they’d be five. The busiest day, 15,” said the Nusra insider. At first, they were sent to Atma, a village just inside Syria, to a muhajiroon camp located not far from the border, where they would be farmed out to various units across the country. But eventually the Turks dug a deep trench in the flat red earth along their border with Atma, making the once-easy crossing more difficult, and the camp became notorious after two foreign journalists accidentally wandered into it and were kidnapped. By February 2013, it was closed.

***

Foreign fighters, however, were still streaming into Syria, and from there, some continued into Iraq. By March, a new Nusra camp for foreign fighters had reportedly been established in Ras al-Hosn, which was one of the main reasons I travelled to the small, ancient village in Idlib province. It was March 2, and I’d come to meet the local Nusra emir, Abu Ratib, whose area of operations extended to Atma.

Abu Ratib drove up to the checkpoint outside his base, a single-story former government office across the street from a disused school, in a light gray Mitsubishi jeep with blacked-out windows. He wore a black headscarf, military camouflage pants, black long-sleeved T-shirt and a puffy black vest. He had a chest-length black beard and dark eyes. He agreed in principle to speak with me, but needed the permission of his older brother, who had overall responsibility for the province. He was traveling elsewhere in Idlib and wouldn’t be back for days.

I climbed into the Mitsubishi, along with two Nusra men and with Abu Ratib behind the wheel. Two Kalashnikovs were in the backseat and another in the front. We drove the short distance from the Nusra outpost to the emir’s exceedingly modest single-story home nestled among olive groves and the ancient ruins dotted throughout the village. I was to wait with his family in case he heard from his brother. That’s how these groups worked. You couldn’t just speak to a fighter without his emir’s permission.

I stayed with Abu Ratib’s wife, Um Mohammad, a harried 27-year-old mother of three with dimples and a broad smile. She led me into the room where she spent most of her day with her children; a three-year old girl, a 15-month old girl and two-month-old Mohammad. Her mother-in-law was seated on the floor rocking Mohammad in a swinging cot attached to a hook in the ceiling.

Over coffee and dates, the women and several of their neighbors lamented ISIL’s harsh practices. They said an Egyptian ISIL member had killed his wife, a female doctor, because he said she was an apostate for working alongside a male doctor. “Now, who is going to treat us?” Um Mohammad asked. Abu Ratib’s mother relayed a tale about a crying woman who marched into the Nusra outpost one day, took off her hijab and told the emir she no longer wanted to be a Muslim. She said seven ISIL members had “married” her, one after the other, in the same night. It was gang rape. “This is not our religion,” the emir’s mother said. I didn’t know if the stories were true or not, but the women certainly believed them. We slept in the same room on thin mattresses—the emir’s mother, wife and his three children. I left the next morning at 7 a.m.

Rania Abouzeid is an independent journalist who has covered the Middle East and Pakistan for 15 years.